This documentary fails throughout. A story so shocking, of the mosterous H. H. Holmes and his "Murder Castle", is one of the most gruesome crime stories in world history, yet being so far in the past, it's no where near as well known as more recent ones, with film, video and forensics.
But this documentary makes no effort to examine what is known about Holmes, or to use his real name, Herman Webster Mudgett, or where he came from, or what, other than being a con man, was in his life before the crimes began.
Somehow, amongst the nebulous, politically charged, taking-head expert nobodies, comes a story about how police in Chicago, or maybe in general, only came about to protect those dirty rich citizens from the poor. The Holmes story (some of it? All of it?) was, or might've been a conspiracy to make the police look good, and newspapers snapped up the gory details. And why are we focused on the New York World newspaper's coverage? It is a Chicago story. But hunting down more pertinent sources was not a high priority.
This is accompanied by not only the ubiquitous hallmark of dirt cheap TV production: weakly acted and dressed "Re-enactments," but all the photos to illustrate the world of the 1890s and some of the participants, are slathered in reality-obscuring gobs of thick colorization.
In the end, an oppurtunity to make a fascinating story come to life is instead, a confusing, dull waste of time.